


The Jetsam Sunk, I'm Left Behind

by lackluster_lexicon



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Asphyxiation, Gen, Panic Attacks, Phobias
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 15:13:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11671659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lackluster_lexicon/pseuds/lackluster_lexicon
Summary: He’s five the first time he gets bronchitis. He’d always been a wheezy kid, but the coughing eventually gets worse until his ribs are bruised and every breath rattles in his chest. His mother has him gargling salt water a couple times a day, but it only abates the symptoms, and he spends almost every night awake with Sarah rubbing his back and whispering lullabies as he cries.





	The Jetsam Sunk, I'm Left Behind

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this post](http://usenecessaryforce.tumblr.com/post/150371305463) followed by [this ask](http://usenecessaryforce.tumblr.com/post/150452717238/just-to-say-that-your-headcanon-about-steve-not) on Tumblr. Title is a line from "Into the Ocean" by Blue October.

He’s five the first time he gets bronchitis. He’d always been a wheezy kid, but the coughing eventually gets worse until his ribs are bruised and every breath rattles in his chest. His mother has him gargling salt water a couple times a day, but it only abates the symptoms, and he spends almost every night awake with Sarah rubbing his back and whispering lullabies as he cries.

After that, he never quite bounces back. He gets strep throat when he is nine, which then turns into scarlet fever, and then into rheumatic fever. He catches colds that settle in his chest every few weeks, and then he starts getting sinus infections along with them. He spends more time in more pain than he thinks he can bear, and he sobs, and he suffocates, and he writhes in his bed wondering if this is how it’s going to be for the rest of his life: always on the verge of drowning.

—

“You know, I still don’t know how to dance.”

“That’s all right. Just be there.”

He breathes.

“We’ll have the band play something slow.”

Growing ever closer is a pristine expanse of ice. His face is numb from the frigid air rushing through a hole in the windscreen, roaring through his ears, threatening to drown out Peggy’s voice over the radio. He doesn’t think to look for the shield – he’s too green, too afraid – but he does have the wherewithal to snatch his compass from the altimeter.

“I’d hate to step on your – ”

The impact lifts him from the seat and jettisons him into the windscreen, but he doesn’t make it far through it; the Arctic Ocean punches like a battering ram into the plane, forcing him back into the Valkyrie. For a dizzying moment, he’s still conscious enough to pull himself out of the frigid saline and into the pocket of air at the back of the cockpit, but several of his ribs are bruised or broken, and the sudden blast of freezing water has robbed his lungs of air. He makes it as far as the back of the cockpit before he collapses, longing for warm air and inhaling nothing but shards of glass – or, at least, that’s how it feels before he tightens his fist around the compass in his hand and lets his breathing slow almost to a standstill.

—

He’s not so green when the Winter Soldier locks his metallic hand around Steve’s throat, but he manages to forget everything he knows anyway. He doesn’t make a move to try to collapse the Soldier’s grip, doesn’t go in for a kick even though he’s well in-range; he just closes his hands around the Soldier’s wrists, grits his teeth, and blanks the fuck out.

When he can breathe again, it’s because the Soldier has thrown him; he flips over the hood of a truck and then hits asphalt, sucking in air like it’s the first time he’s tasted it, and his vision clears just in time for him to dodge a street-shattering blow from above.

Minutes later, when he rips the mask off the Winter Soldier and finds Bucky underneath, he feels his breath get punched out of him again. Adrenaline has sent his blood pounding in his ears, but he still hears the Soldier ask him, “Who the hell is Bucky?”

—

Bucky’s in there. Steve’s already seen him, already heard him say his name – “My name is Bucky,” not James, not the Winter Soldier – his name is Bucky, and he’s trapped in his own body as it tries to commandeer a helicopter. In a flurry of moments, the helicopter is coming toward Steve and he’s dodging whirling blades and screaming metal and then he’s on his feet again, peering through the spiderweb of cracks in the copter’s windscreen, searching for Bucky like he’d failed to do a lifetime ago –

Bucky’s up, but Steve barely has time to register the blank fury on Bucky’s face before glass showers his own and his throat closes up again. This time he remembers what to do to break the hold, but now he can’t do any of it; Bucky is still inside the helicopter, which is teetering on the edge of the roof, and Steve is once again left with his hands clutching futilely at Bucky’s wrist. Instinct takes over and he presses one hand to the windscreen, tries to pull away from the vice crushing his trachea, but Bucky’s hold is too strong and the copter too heavy and they fall, and Bucky still holds on, and Steve can’t breathe and his heart is pounding in his ears again and his vision is just beginning to tunnel when they hit the water and Bucky lets go.

Steve inhales and gets a lungful of water.

He can see Bucky’s hand, hanging limp through the windscreen, but every nerve of his body is screaming at him to get to the surface and get some air or he’s going to die, he’s going to die  _right now_ , he’s on the verge of vomiting and then he’ll drown on that too –

He breaks the surface with Bucky in tow and feels reborn.

—

“You almost drowned,” Bucky says. In the next room, Wakandan doctors are preparing a cryo chamber for him.

“A couple times,” Steve replies. 

Bucky shakes his head.

“In DC. I remember. I almost didn’t jump after you.”

“But you did.”

Bucky won’t look directly at Steve. Steve can’t look away.

“I just dropped you onto land. You weren’t breathing. And I just stood there until you coughed up water and started breathing again. And then I left.”

Steve smiles, but it’s sad and he knows it.

“You had to get out of there. And you saved my life, Buck.”

“Yeah, sure, but – do you remember when you were twelve and had that massive asthma attack? You were getting your ass kicked and just – stopping breathing right in the middle of it.”

Steve nods.

“I’d never seen you that afraid. I don’t think  _I’d_ ever been that afraid.”

“You saved me then, too.”

“I shoved one of those cigarettes in your mouth and dragged you to your mother. You were unconscious by then.”

“Well, I sure wasn’t going to drag myself.”

Bucky’s lips part gently as though he’s going to rebut, but he doesn’t say anything for a moment. Although generally not known for his patience, Steve waits; he can do that for Bucky.

“I think I always remembered that,” Bucky says. “Even when I wasn’t myself.”

Steve’s smile fades. He thinks he knows where this is going, and he doesn’t want his last conversation with Bucky in who knows how long to be like this. He doesn’t want Bucky to go under carrying this guilt, too.

“But you weren’t yourself.”

Bucky swallows, works his jaw.

“I guess it doesn’t matter right now,” Bucky says, “but I don’t think I want a new arm. In case anyone mentions it while I’m under.”

Steve isn’t sure how to respond. He still dreams about fighting the Winter Soldier for the first time, though in his dreams it’s Bucky and Bucky always looks terrified, as though he can’t control what the arm is doing as it chokes the life out of Steve. The first time he’d woken from it, Steve had staggered out of bed on the verge of hyperventilating and thrown up into his wastebasket, and waking up from those nightmares had only gotten marginally easier before this whole mess with Zemo. He can’t tell Bucky that, though, so he turns to making a promise – something concrete, something he knows he can do.

“All right,” Steve says. “The stump sort of suits you, anyway.”

Bucky looks to Steve, both bewildered and amused.

“As far as the whole ‘rugged outlaw’ look goes,” Steve adds, and Bucky finally, finally smiles.

“You’re an asshole.”

Steve smiles, too.

“Some things never change, I guess.”

—

That night, after Bucky is safely put to sleep and Steve has retired to his borrowed room in the Wakandan palace, he locks the door and cries – full-body, soul-wracking sobs until he’s gasping for air but, for the first time that he can remember, doesn’t particularly care if he gets it.


End file.
